24) А. Иванов.

New Testament teaching about the Kingdom of God. Orthodox Interview 1900 December. What is interesting in this treatise and deserves some attention is the author’s attempt, carried out, however, only in the most general terms, to connect Christian asceticism with the Christian’s desire for the “Kingdom of God.” According to the author, a radical internal revolution is required in order to see the Kingdom of God... The essence and difficulty of these efforts lie in the transfer of the will from concerns about maintaining one’s animal existence, from eternally defending oneself in the struggle of life - to the search for the Kingdom and Truth of God, that is, unity with God, and therefore internal purity, to the creation of a God-filial mood with complete devotion to all one’s interests, one’s whole self to His good will. A person separated from God is completely immersed in the world of things and is at enmity with his neighbors; he who finds a father in God leaves worldly cares, purifies his heart and is reconciled with his brothers. In this striving for sonship with God, Christian purity, or asceticism, has its basis, as the progressive renunciation of man from the dominion of things. For in Christianity, asceticism is not the proud self-affirmation of the spirit, as in the Stoics, nor the Indian denial of matter in the name of the Divine, nor the Buddhist denial in the name of denial itself, nor the struggle with the evil principle, original and existing outside of man, as in the religion of the Persians, but it is a life worthy of the son of God, and therefore, free from slavery to things. 1389 Regarding this basic point of view on asceticism, it should be noted that it undoubtedly reflects the views of Prof. V.I. Nesmelov, consistently carried out in his book “The Science of Man” (Volume One. Experience in psychological history and criticism of the basic issues of life. Third edition. Kazan. 1906), according to which the evil of human existence in the world is determined by the fact that the area of ​​his internal freedom is subject to the pressure of external necessity - the law of mechanical causality and the oppression of material need. 1390 See, for example, pp. 290–291: “a person is at the same time both a real image of God and a real thing of the physical world, and therefore, in fact, he can actually realize the idea of ​​​​God-likeness in his life only in a continuous struggle with himself.” Wed. also page 807: “the basis of the contradiction (of thought and life) is the fundamental contradiction between the natural content of the human personality and the mechanical nature of the physical World.” See also pp. 898, 400.